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US documents provide new insights into the losses: More than half a million Russian soldiers may already have become incapacitated in the Ukraine war.
Washington – Leaked documents from the US Department of Defense suggested that for every Russian soldier serving in the Ukraine War three to four members of the military from Wladimir Putin were so badly wounded that they can no longer return to battle. This was reported by the Economist. From February 2022 to mid-June 2024, the British newspaper continues, 462,000 to 728,000 Russian soldiers were incapacitated – either because they died or were seriously injured.
The Economist based its calculations on increasingly consistent Western estimates of Russian death tolls. John Foreman, British military attaché in Moscow between 2019 and 2022, told the Kyiv Independentthat there was no speculation about casualty figures at first because there was so much propaganda circulating. “But it seems to me that over the past year and a half the British, American and Ukrainian estimates have converged,” Foreman added.
High losses: Up to 728,000 Russian soldiers dead or unable to fight in Ukraine
In fact, there are now relatively reliable minimum figures on the losses in the Ukraine war. The independent Russian media Media Zone together with BBC News Russia based on freely available data such as obituaries, relatives’ social media posts, regional media reports and local administration announcements. As of July 5, they identified 58,207 Russian soldiers killed in the Ukraine war by name.
Media Zone However, it is concerned that the actual number of Russian casualties is certainly higher. In order to get closer to this figure, the media, in cooperation with the equally independent Russian news portal Medusa regularly provide supplementary estimates. They are based on data from the estate register, which allow the calculation of excess mortality among men in Russia. For the period from the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 to June 2024, Media Zone and Medusa of up to 140,000 fallen Russian soldiers.
Western estimates of Russian losses are becoming more consistent
This figure is not far from the 150,000 Russian servicemen killed that French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné spoke of on May 3. At the time, he put the total number of casualties, which also includes wounded, missing and prisoners, at 500,000. The British Ministry of Defense also used this figure at the end of May. Even the Ukrainian High Command, which has been accused in the past of inflating Russian casualty figures, put the figure at 552,190 on July 8.
Moreover, estimates of Russian casualties usually do not include Ukrainians from the occupied territories in Donbass serving in the Russian army, nor members of mercenary groups. Nevertheless, even these horrendous numbers of dead and wounded do not seem to significantly limit Russia’s ability to continue the war in Ukraine. New York Times recently wrote, citing US government officials, that Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers every month in order to continue to send wave after wave against Ukrainian defense lines.
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